Characters: Edward Nigma, Harley Quinn, Pamela Isley
Pairings: Indirect HarleyxJoker
Chapter Rating: T
Summary: As the time set for the escape draws ever closer, Harley and Eddie begin to question their resolve.
Warnings: Language, mental illness, mention of domestic abuse
Surprise Bitch. Bet you'd thought you'd seen the last of this trite-ass reference joke. HAHA I'm back! The spring semester is almost over for me (I still have finals to do though, and I'm scared shitless) which means that hopefully we'll be getting on with this poorly planned little nugget. Sorry it's so short, hardly fitting of a triumphant return, but take what you can get. The chapter to follow will probably be a while, unfortunately, but the important thing is that it will come (probably.)
xxxxx
Okay. Alright. Alright, alright, alright. So no shower today. Fine. Fucking fine.
Eddie jostled back miserably onto his bunk, exhausted and bound in a strait jacket. Thinking on this morning's goings on made him wince.
So he'd over-reacted a little. It happens. He groaned with annoyance, mostly at himself.
In preparation for the escape, all concerned parties were encouraged by Tetch to wean themselves off of their respective medications at least partially, to make the changeover back into the real world less jarring. As such, the underside of The Riddler's mattress bore a small fortune in capsules of Xanax and Zoloft, all disintegrating and caked with dry spit.
The process of coming down off of them had not been a particularly kind one this go-round. A number of his old tics had been resurfacing over the course of the last few days, which wasn't helped at all by the horrible rash he'd broken into, courtesy of Poison Ivy. He twitched at the very thought. The two of them were not on good terms.
Beyond compulsive riddling, the Prince of Puzzles found himself inhibited by other things. Like doorways, for example, and human contact for another.
He found that he couldn't pass comfortably over any threshold without first "clearing away" the invisible manifestations of failure and anxious transitions that he imagined there— foreboding proverbial germs left over from when other people had moved through them- though he wasn't always sure of how to go about doing this. Normally he could "wipe" the empty space clean with his wrist and forearm, but this morning, something about even going near it—let alone touching it—was almost painful.
Human contact—bare skin on bare skin in any form—also spread these pseudo-germs. He didn't want to catch someone else's personality traits, and though he knew rationally that it was impossible, it felt screamingly likely that he would do so nonetheless, much in the same what that he might catch a virus. He didn't want to catch someone else's quirks. He didn't want to catch their stupid.
If he couldn't properly avoid or work around his sticking points, Eddie would panic. Like a base animal in a small cage.
The worst part being, of course, that he knew he was completely deluded if he believed a speck of what his own neurotic alarm bells denoted, but he couldn't stop, plain and simple.
Maybe he was crazy after all.
He was still riled from his little kerfuffle with the orderlies this morning. By his count, it was a little past noon now, and he wondered apprehensively if he was emotionally sound enough to carry out all that he promised he would for the sake of freedom. It was expected that he would slip out of his cell and situate himself at the loading dock by nine o' clock. So he had less than nine hours to pull himself together.
The uncertainty of his situation made his chest feel hollow with worry, replacing his heart and lungs and whatever else was bouncing around in there with a horrible cloud of dark matter, whispering urgently about impending doom.
He glanced into the hallway through his Plexiglas wall, still lying on his back. He suddenly wished that he could bail out and flee. If only that hadn't been the entire point of this imminent sojourn, he might have tried.
xxxx
"But d'ya think if I asked though—if I asked and reeeeeeeaaaally sold it—we could stop off 'n' bring J along?" Quinn whimpered and mewled through drying tears, sat on the floor of her cell like a child. She wiped her dribbling eyes on her sleeve.
Harley peered through the transparent barrier before her, eyes begging for validation. Ivy for one, refused to placate her about this.
"For the last time, no! Now stop talking about it so loud before someone gets wise." In a huff, Isley resettled into her own cot's headboard and shuffled her magazine in a manner which very seriously expressed her disinterest in furthering this discussion. She was up to her fucking ears in Harley's forlorn babbling.
When the little jester had realized that she'd be leaving her precious Puddin' behind, all of her vim and vigor for the upcoming escape had fallen away like dead leaves. Her newly sullen mood had been carrying on strong since yesterday afternoon, and being a friend, Ivy felt it necessary that she look after her a bit, try to calm her down. However, she couldn't quite say that she was unhappy to shoot down every "Can Mista J come too?" that flew her way. What Harley called "tough love" seemed suspiciously akin to horrible abuse in Pam's opinion. And besides, as she'd explained countless times these past twenty-four hours or so the plans were already made. It was too late to make adjustments. Even if the group wanted Joker's company (which they most certainly did not. She didn't have to ask to know what the others thought of him) it simply couldn't be done. That was that.
Harley sniffed again. "then I'm comin' back for 'im tomorrow," she said with resolve. Her companion bit back another hard-edged response, planning to keep the two apart for as long as she could manage. She could only begin to imagine how furious he'd be at getting left by Harley, his fucking lap dog, of all people.